Were any of teh team viewing the Coronation on Saturday? I kind of forgot it a bit as I was trying to recover an email account, then my son said it was all over. Didn't have the telly on or anything. The streets round here were quiet, although there was a barbecue at a house down the road (in the rain) with drunkeness and tuneless renditions of "If I were a rich man" (basically the only line they knew), but they often seem to have a "do" at the weekend so...

The police have made arses of themselves in London. Seems they negotiated with Republic, the long-standing anti-monarchy, pro-republic group, who wanted to have a small protest group at the coronation and everything was agreed; numbers, positions and so on. Then on the day they arrested all the leaders with no warning and vague charges. They've since been smearing them on twitter with talk of conspiracies etc. Of course, since the Tories forced through an act of parliament to allow exactly this to happen, it wasn't really a surprise.

The previous night/morning they'd arrested members of the "Night Stars" group in Soho. This is a volunteer group that walks around central London at night with the aim of helping women, the homeless, and other vulnerable people who might be stuck/lost whatever. Basically, advice, support, help to get out of the area, even provision of rape-alarms. They wear bright pink high-viz tabards, clearly identifying themselves,and operate in partnership with London Councils, businesses, and THE METROPOLITAN POLICE all of whom have official logos on the tabards. Again, vague charges and smears. Those arrested were held for 14+ hours and some have been charged although it's not clear what with. Apparently it was the TSG, the latest incarnation of the friendly bunch of police formerly known as the Special Patrol Group, and rumours about rape-alarms being distributed to throw at horses (YES, REALLY) and intelligence reports, are being tweeted by the Met.

This nonsense comes from the top. I must admit to having given limited thought to the monarchy until recently, but the absurd waste of money for a family with personal wealth millions of times greater than the average family in the UK, and last and not least the chilling attitude of certain senior police officers, is swinging me into opposition.

I [used to] do a lot of photo manipulation, and when I find myself trying to decide "do I really want that there, or am I being too lazy to clone it out", I ask myself the question "if it wasn't there, would I add it in" - sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it's no - either way, it allows me to move on, either finishing the image or adding it to the do later pile.

Anyway, one day I asked myself that question about the royal family...

Obviously, we can't get rid of them because they're single handedly responsible for global tourism - without them, nobody would travel to look at buildings and then the entire world economy would be in ruins - and so we need to wave enough flags so that never happens.

Your text has a splendid colour with which I agree.

Deference to the monarchy has waxed and wained. I'm not advocating a solution such as the one favoured in 1649, but I see no reason why the public should continue funding this absurdly wealthy and massive family or why they should have any exemptions whatsoever from law and tax. I would also like to see some attempt to recoup losses to public assets that have accumulated as private wealth within the family as a result of their past exemptions from law and tax, say by levying a much higher rate of taxation for 25 years on anybody wishing to retain any kind of royal title. 
 

I built a summerhouse down the allotment. Then turned up for a few late beers as the nearby street party was winding down, it was nice to see a few people and chat but if there was any Royal business going on at all, I thankfully missed it.

My local (Labour-run by a huge majority) council spunked more than £180,000 on Coronation-related stuff. Obscene!
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/13654494/embed
 

Where did that data come from?

There's a couple of zeros where I would have expected there not to be.

I believe the authors FOI'd the councils, hence several of them not having any data/reply yet. I've not looked deeply into it though.

I was at work, which was quiet except for about half an hour shortly after the coronation ended when everyone decided they had to shop /right now/.
The helicopter flyover actually passed right above us so we all rushed out to watch that - the highlight of the day.

Heh, I live North of Aberdeen and we get about 20 helicopters a day flying over us to the oil rigs, so novelty is limited here. Saying that, I couldn't have cared less about the coronation, although an extra day off work was OK I guess.

Didn't watch any. Didn't get an extra day off work.
And for some reason it made this week feel like the longest week in existence.

Sorry to hear that. I still haven't watched any of it, apart from a couple of still shots of pre-protestors being arrested and 30 seconds of the king bloke in a Disney carriage with subtitles from a lip-reader.
How come you didn't get the free day? Seems like that was the ONLY good thing for a normal working person. Like one of those things where you go "Hey, can't we celebrate that really wonderful thing like Jesus personally healing those 5 million children" and the govt says, "Soz, no MONEY TREE" and then it's like "Oh, the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha hat-ceremony. YAY, a day off all round (except for Ant)".

The group I work for decided they didn't want to give it. Not contractually required and most sites would have been operating anyway, so it would have been an extra day holiday for another time.
Tight bastards.